12: The Elements of Great Managing
By Rodd Wagner and James Harter
Gallup Press, 233 pages, $32.50
A few years ago, patients needing a non-emergency MRI appointment at Toronto's Hospital For Sick Children had to wait an average of nine months -- sometimes the delay was more than a year. But thanks to a new managing director of diagnostic imaging, Susan Jewell, the wait was pushed down to a few weeks.
Many factors contributed to that transformation, including increased hours of operation and improved patient scheduling. But, according to Rodd Wagner and James Harter of the Gallup Organization, the most crucial was her ability to forge an atmosphere of greater respect among the different professions working in the imaging centre.
The crunch between those professions typically had come over whether the children should be sedated in order to be still for what can be a scan of a few minutes. The technologists wanted sedation, to get a good picture on the first try, but the nurses opposed it as a safety issue. The result was pervasive animosity between the two camps, neither side feeling respected, and a breakdown of general co-operation -- until their new leader let people feel their opinions counted and built a cohesive team.
Ms. Jewell is one of the model leaders cited in 12: The Elements of Great Managing, based on the groundbreaking Gallup research that identified a dozen factors critical to sustaining high performance.
The 12 elements are:
Employees must know what is expected. More than a job description, they need a detailed understanding of how the tasks they perform fit with everyone else around them, and how expectations change when the circumstances change.
Materials and equipment. There are few things more frustrating than wanting to make a difference at work but being held back by inadequate resources. Without those resources, job stress rises.
The opportunity to do what I do best. Matching a person to the right job is one of the most complicated responsibilities a manager faces. It's important to know each employee's strengths, and match talents to tasks.
Recognition and praise. Employees want to be recognized for their contributions and, although it's cheap to provide, praise is painfully absent in most workplaces. That praise or recognition must come frequently -- at least once every seven days, the Gallup research suggests.
Someone at work cares about me as a person. We all want to belong to tribes, feeling wanted and cared for at work. Call centre manager Larry Walters, another of the star leaders profiled in the book, says: "The first thing out of my mouth in the morning isn't: 'How are your numbers?' Instead, it's: 'How was your son's Little League game last night?"
Someone at work encourages my development. Employees expect to have a mentor in the workplace, offering guidance and counsel; two-thirds of those employees who have somebody at work who encourages their development classify themselves as engaged -- but only 1 per cent of those without a mentor are engaged.
My opinions seem to count. As at Sick Kids hospital, we all want to be heard by our colleagues and bosses. That means rejecting the scientific management notion of Frederick Taylor that employees are automatons and bosses can plot a perfectly efficient way for those employees to perform.
A connection with the mission of the company. We want work to be noble. Unlike the other elements, which depend heavily on an immediate supervisor, this cascades down from senior management.
Co-workers committed to doing quality work. Few factors are more corrosive to teamwork than having slackers around us, taking advantage of our hard work. Bosses who ignore the problem can send productivity into a tailspin.
Employees have a best friend at work. This is the most controversial of the elements but the research shows that when employees say they have someone at work who is like a best friend, that links to profitability, safety and customer loyalty. The more interconnected a group, the better they will perform routinely and under pressure. Just as managers work to create ties between themselves at off-site retreats and games of golf, they need to seed friendships among employees.
Somebody talks to employees about their progress. Supervisors must maintain a continuing discussion of how the employee is faring. Drive-by performance evaluations don't cut it. The manager must maintain a delicate balance between giving candid, objective feedback and not crushing the employee's spirit.
Opportunities to learn and grow. The dictionary definition of career revolves around the idea of successively greater accomplishments, and we expect our bosses to make that possible in our workplace.
That's a lot to assimilate, let alone try to integrate into your daily routine as a manager. Some companies urge managers to concentrate on one element every month. But the exemplars profiled in the book seem to have an affinity for one or two of the elements, and that strength seems to energize those around them.
The authors note that management is a solemn responsibility, and at the core of management -- and the 12 elements -- is a concern for others. "The managers who are best at getting the most from people are those who give the most to them," they conclude.
The book can be dreary reading, despite the many success stories it chronicles, because after a while they all start to sound the same, and the barrage of statistics and studies start to lose their power. But their research touches on the crucial ingredients of employee engagement, so it's worth reading, but perhaps at a leisurely pace so each element can stand out.
In Addition: Add risk intelligence to the various intelligences that managers need, along with emotional, social, executive and appreciative intelligence. In Risk Intelligence: Learning to Manage What We Don't Know (Harvard Business School Press, 210 pages, $36.95), consultant David Apgar highlights the importance of learnable risks, in which our knowledge of the risk can distinguish us from competitors. He then shows how to score your corporate risk intelligence, conduct a risk intelligence audit, and build networks that help you adapt to risk. It's an interesting, eye-opening book but, by its nature, overemphasizes the issue beyond the attention most managers will want to give it.